Dark Times 2016!

So I decided to throw together a brand new Dark Times list for old times sake. If you look closer you'll notice a lot of differences between this list and all the others you've come across in the past both in the main deck and sideboard.

Card Choices:
Lotus and Jet are for early game mana accel. Theres no Petal because we want our mana to stick for as long as possible until we can Null Rod. Or if you wish include petal and cut Urborg. Urborg provides a key 20th land standard for Null Rod decks, while Petal gives you another way to combo on the 1st turn if you happen to draw it. ( When I say combo I mean use Vampire into Dark Depths pass the turn.) Urborg was decided on mainly because it always taps for mana under a Null Rod from your opponent and is a single Legendary land in the list. It's our Tolarian Academy so to speak and in a large scale tournament I would use it instead of Lotus Petal. Urborg is our Wasteland Vampire Hexmage mana.

The rest of the list is Standard Dark Times. Encroach is for more Wasteland like disruption that comes in the form of hand information. Cabal Therapy can also fill this slot or Yixlid Jailer, Phyrexian Negator. I sided with Encroach because it's the most disruptive. Liliana of the Veil can be swapped out for Sinkhole or Hymn to Tourach. Since it does both at certain times in the game I thought why not just keep it since we need a way to rack up card advantage in the long game under a Null Rod.

For the side board I've spiced things up a bit by including Engineered Plague and Sadistic Sacrament. Sadistic Sacrament is for rogue Time Vault decks that linger in the metagame and Storm Combo; it also handles Bomberman and many other decks that rely on just a few cards to win.

This is my Dark Time Variant. I am not plaing tournaments for 2 years, but I look into things here and now. This list does fine, there are some comboes, which are really fun. It was designed to beat a 4 Chalice Metagame, therefore came Hex Parasite, which can also be used for x=0 to enebale Death's Shadow, which was a good Golem blocker. For the Bug Fish sake, Horobi joined the team, who can also kill creatrues, when Parasite removes zero counters from opponent creatures. Biggest design flaw the list struggles, is Parasite beign an Artifact, and the non bo with Null Rod. The List plays pretty speed up, but I guess unless Necropotence gets urestricted, its just a budget toy. The Metagame is way to wide, to fit everything in the 75.

This deck is the most theoretical deck I've ever built in any format, probably because the shell is so small it can go in so many directions. But it has to evaluate the potential of card draw for both sides and whether it's better to play more spells or stop the opponent from doing so.

It's an open question as to whether the Remoras should be Spheres. Basically you want to prevent your opponent from being broken on the early turns, and you usually only want to cast one spell per turn in this deck. The curve of this deck basically tops out at 1, with only 3 spells going higher (Trinisphere, Demonic, Time Walk). A deck with no creatures that likes Sphere of Resistance - go figure! 3 Pithing Needle (4th in the board) maindeck is a must to stop Wasteland especially, but there are other shenanigans too.

This could easily splash a 3rd color with -1 Sea, +1 Dual for matchups where a sketchy mana base won't kill you. I was originally with Esper splashing Balance, Priest, and other SB hate. I also tried mono-black (keeping the free 1cc blue spells), where the Remoras necessarily became Spheres, other draw became discard (Therapy/Thoughtseize), and I fit in a couple of Vampiric Hexmage.

HelmLine seems like a nice sideboard package (I even maindecked it a few games). I see now that the previous poster had the same package.

It felt like a real deck over several test games. No blowouts. I probably ended 50% for the day competing against several of the metagame heavy-hitters. Not bad for a first draft.

@halahel Yeah halahel I've tested this list on Cockatrice, it works fairly well depending on the hands you draw. It really needs a good Dark Ritual, Lotus, or Mox hand to get a good start. It used to run Leyline of the Void before Liliana and Encroach were used. Liliana is for Tinker bots, hand disruption and the ultimate on her is nice as well. Encroach let's you greedily disrupt hands that could have Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad and others.

Urborg is nice to have as a backup mana source with your Dark Depths.

The sideboard is fairly common and contains the basic cards needed to fight decks nowadays.

Leyline is for Graveyard hate, Sacrament punishes 1-0f decks. Plague hits things like Elves, Delver, and even things like Tarmogoyf if you get enough of them stacked up. Emissary is for Shops and Affinity, maybe Tezzerett.